explicitly stupid adventures of orange OC in the kingdom of darkness

Hooded ponies with strange black patterns on their faces stood in a circle inside the dimly lit cavern with a small fire in the center and several candles on the walls. Two of the big guys held me by the arms as I struggled vainly with my mind and body numbed by some sort of powerful magic. The pony in the center had his staff pointed at me and the tip was glowing white and dissipating into a sphere of dark blue around the edges.

"You are hereby banished from the King's domain and sentenced to death by 'the hunt'," the thunderous voice echoed throughout the cavern. The blob of white-blue light collided with my head and I braced my mind one last time against the memory blocking magic. The dream faded.

It was afternoon inside the little ditch in the plains. I woke up to find myself partially rested and immediately remembered the shadow realm. A parallel plain to Equestria covered in blackness (they called it) where the "king" had chosen to set up his domain, but now he had grown tired of his creation and wanted control of the real world for himself.

The banishment was a ritual where a member of the realm was disowned, memory wiped, and was now open to be hunted by anypony of the dark realm, whosoever desired. In history victims of such a banishment had rarely survived more than a couple days and never more than a few weeks.

I searched my memory for any more clues, but all I could remember was that I'd cheated somehow. The realization that searching my tattered scraps of memory was only a waste of energy dawned quickly enough.

Already breaking a sweat from the sun, I climbed the hill to look over the plains. The wind swiftly carried the clouds overhead and sent ripples into the fields of wild grass. On the horizon the faintest outlines of the mountains near Canterlot were already visible. For now the only thing I had left was to follow my instincts and get to the library as quickly as possible. On foot, though...not on train.

My mind quickly skimmed over what I thought I remembered of the last few days. The unicorn on the farm. I glanced over my shoulder to find that the farm was already well out of view. Had there been casualties already? Did that even mean anything to me? I decided it didn't. The raspberry mare... She said they'd find me if they needed me, what did that mean?  Or was that even it? I could barely remember what happened that night, let alone understand it in such a time. Out of the days before I recounted a few moments in a forest, and beyond that everything was a blank. Except for...something rainbowy. I shook my head, the remembering was useless.

Ahead lay a couple days of travel by plains and at the end the flask could be refilled in the river just before facing the city. I looked forward to travelling through the hills, but it wasn't uncommon for pegasi to fly over this area once in a while (or any area for that matter). It dawned on me that travel by night was a safer choice to reduce the chances of unwated attention. The cloak on my back was the same color as the grass, though it got very hot under the sun, and a small moving dot was still fairly noticeable during the day. On the other hand, it's not like it was all that unusual for a random pony to be walking through the plains, was it? As I thought about it I understood that the hoof that put this cloak on that nail may very well have been my own. It was too short for a blanket, so the final decision was to suffer through the day's heat and keep walking.

Gusts of warm wind blew at my hood and made me tigten it around the edge of my face uncomfortably. It was a necessary sacrifice.

The hours passed uneasily while I snaked through the terrain, trying to pick out the lower points without making it look like I was doing it on purpose. Once in a while there was a solitary flier passing overhead. I still didn't know what to expect of my pursuers. Were they afraid of the sun? Could they hire a pegasus to fly around looking for me specifically? I couldn't remember. They probably wouldn't know where the chance fliers were going unless they flew through these parts on regular occasion. Waves of thoughts like these occasionally surfaced in my head in between long stretches of trance. Meanwhile I waited for the cover of night to take off my hood and be at ease in the cold breezes, but the more I walked and the more the sun turned its arc in the sky, the more it dawned on me that maybe the night was the proper time to be careful. The king's servants, after all, excelled in the shadows.

Hours dragged on and on, but at length the sky began to emit the softer shades of an eerily beautiful sunset. I hadn't counted the fliers. I knew there'd been several, possibly some I hadn't noticed. Memories of the farm unicorn telling me about spiders slowly resurfaced while the sun started to set somewhere behind me to the left, pink tones lingering on the sparse clouds left ahead of me. The words weren't all there. The only thing left was the unicorn's emotion echoing on the heat waves. It was a cryptic warning of some sort.

If it was anything more than the 'you're going to break your neck climbing on that thing' deal that I got growing up it wasn't of any use at this point. Somehow the plains had to be covered.

Whatever it was there was something just a little bit magical about it, and I didn't have spellhurling in mind.

I took my hood off and chugged half the water flask watching the sunset. There was nopony in the sky. When the disk disappeared I started at a slow run towards the mountains, expecting to go a long distance. The plan was to run the night, sleep the day, finish the water and then the river would be well within reach on the night following. I dove anxiously into the lengthening shadows, trying to measure the pace carefully to go the whole distance.

Just before tuning out I noticed a skeleton on the side of one of the little valleys. The pony skeleton rested on his back over a black cloak that had not yet decomposed with distantly familiar embroidery along the edges. Next to the skeleton lay an equally curious small book. I read through it quickly in the fading light, but immediately found that all the pages were blank except the first one. The only text was a hastily written diary entry about resting in the forest and continuing through the plains during the night.

I glanced at the skeleton. This stallion had made much faster progress than me on his exile. Perhaps it was incompetence and sheer luck that had kept me alive thus far. The facts noted, I suddenly found it rather unnerving that somepony had followed a plan similar to mine and gone much further, and was dead.

No, the night run wasn't the way to go. I quickly turned the skeleton over and dug my hooves into the ground underneath. A shallow grave was all that I needed.

With the hole dug and the night taking over I lay down inside, pulled the dirt back over me, and covered myself with the remains of my cloaked skeleton friend. Napping with the dead never killed anyone.

The dirt soaked up my sweat. The cloak and skeleton over top made my breathing uneasy. I wiggled in the dirt for lack of space to toss and turn, expecting a sleepless night ahead of me. A feeling of swirling clouds, sparkling stars, and swords stained with black blood in the night seemed like it was just about to catch up with me. Deeper still, there was a recurring notion that I still had some unfinished business here before moving on to the next life.